


Hands in Hands in Hands

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (for now i will probably alternate though), ....im just tagging by chapter, Drabble Collection, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sleepy Cuddles, collections are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-09 13:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13482516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A collection of prompts fills and poly relationships, because I love poly ships in all their beautiful wonder! All ships inside, rating will not go above T, will try to tag per chapter.





	1. Shidgance - Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> TW for chapter: PTSD implied, a brief thought of cheating but it's a mistake and Pidge also doesn't care

She couldn’t sleep.

That wasn’t abnormal. She had nights like this sometimes. Insomnia was a bitch and a half, especially with a brain that went the speed of sound (not to brag) and eczema that liked to flare up when she was anxious (not the most fun). But the point was, she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t sleep, and everybody else was asleep.

But what the hell. The entire point of dating(?) Lance was that she could go get snuggles from him whenever, right? At least if she had any idea of what dating entailed. Which...well, honestly, she didn’t. But she wanted snuggles.

She snuck into Lance’s room, sliding the room open - and paused. Outlined in Lance’s bed in the light from the door were  _two_ bumps under the sheet. Which. Did not fit her idea of dating.

She chewed on her lip. She wasn’t  _mad._ She was too new at this and too bad at the whole ‘I Am A Girlfriend Now’ thing to figure out which conclusions she was supposed to be jumping to. Instead, consumed rather with her usual curiosity, she crept over and tugged the sheet down just a touch. There was Lance’s thatch of brown hair, and then there was -

“Shiro?” she exclaimed, and the person in question jolted upwards. Oops. He stared at her with sudden, startled eyes, and she dropped the sheet, moving backwards a little.

“Uh, sorry,” she started to stutter. “I didn’t mean to - er -” And then she noticed how tired he looked. How  _gaunt._ Maybe it was the light.

Lance was sitting up now, too, a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “P-Pidge, sorry, it - I - it’s not what it looks like -”

“Oh  _hush,”_ she found herself saying. She didn’t think it mattered what it looked like, or whether it was, or whatever. Instead, she caught Shiro’s eyes, even as he tried to glance away in embarrassment. “Are you okay?”

“I, erm.” He managed a sheepish grin. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s okay. Neither could I.” She clambered over Lance - “Oyy!” “Your legs are like  _sticks” -_ and settled herself on Shiro’s far side, between him and the wall. “There.”

Lance’s face appeared on the far side of Shiro’s chest. “You’re not mad at me?”

“Am I supposed to be?”

“I don’t know. It seems like a girlfriend thing to do to be mad at me when you find a guy in my bed.”

Pidge lifted the sheets. “Nah, you’re good, his pants are still on-”

Shiro grabbed the sheets and pulled them back up with a horrified flush. “Pidge.  _Pidge.”_

“Close your eyes,” she laughed. She and Lance would talk tomorrow. And she was already getting some nice ideas. Besides, being a Normal Girlfriend was overrated. Especially with how cozy Shiro’s chest was. 


	2. Klunk - Time-Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Klunk! TW for chapter: ...nothing, really? Rated G.

/gonna keep it to sfw/cuddling for this blog but also I HEAR YOU OKAY

Hunk knew his boyfriends didn’t get along. It had been a point of contention for a long time - a  _longer_ time than he really wanted to admit. And fine, he’d finally admitted it. They were never going to date each other, as much as the thought of it still made his squishy, soft heart weep. It’d be so  _nice._

But, well, the thing was, his boyfriends were idiots.

Which was why he shouldn’t have been surprised to find that Shiro had put them both in “time out” for the day. Which meant, no training, no meals, no leaving the room they’d been stuck in with each other until they’d  _apologized_ to each other. For what, Hunk didn’t know, and Hunk didn’t want to know. He didn’t pick sides. 

What he  _did_ do was sit outside the room and say, in an exaggerated voice, “I really wish I had somebody to smooch right now.”

“Well, we all know whose fault  _that_ is,” came Keith’s grumble. 

“You were  _showing off!”_

Hunk let his head fall against the door with a ‘ _thunk’._ “I don’t care who started it,” he groaned. “I care that-”

“Look, if Lance would just suck it up and apologize-”

“ _You first!”_

Never mind. 

He got to his feet and tried not to stomp off. Idiot boyfriends. Idiot boyfriends getting put in  _time-out_ like  _five-year-olds._

“W-wait, is he leaving?”

“I think he’s leaving.”

“I didn’t-” 

“Fuck,” came Keith’s mumble. Then, even more quietly, so Hunk could barely hear him. “Sorry. Lance. I’m sorry. I was needling you. I know you’re sensitive about the, erm.” Then even more quietly, embarrassed and awkward, “Cargo pilot. Thing.”

There was silence for a moment. Hunk took a few hopeful steps backwards.

“Yeah. A bit,” Lance admitted. “But I was giving you trouble over stupid shit. I kinda deserved it.”

“You did  _not.”_

 _“_ Did  _too.”_

 _“_ Did not.”

“Di - anyway. I’m sorry, man. I’m a dumbass.”

Hunk raised an eyebrow, then turned back. “Did you two only apologize to each other cause I was sad?”

“Incentive helps,” they said as one. 

“...Fine. I’ll take it.” He lifted his communicator. “Shiro, you can let them out now.”

“ _Thank god.”_

The door whirred open, and Hunk lifted them both in a bear hug, earning a wheeze from Keith. Lance just laughed, nuzzling Hunk’s stubble. “So, group snuggles?”

“Sounds good to me!”

Keith groaned quietly. “Is Lance going to be staring at my ass again?”

“I -  _I was not -”_

“Every time. Every time we’re in time out, I catch you staring at my ass.”

“I am  _admiring_ my  _boyfriend’s taste.”_

Hunk rolled his eyes. “Behave. Or I’m putting you ba-”

“We’ll behave.”


	3. Sheithtor - Fear

Keith hadn’t gotten used to the Lotor thing yet. He’d  _get_ there. Probably. With time. Maybe some gin. 

It wasn’t that his....their... Shiro’s....  _whatever -_ it wasn’t that Lotor wasn’t pretty, and charming, and christ he was more than a little sexy, too. If Keith hadn’t realized he was gay a long time ago (Shiro, pool, very very low-slung towel, his fate had been sealed) Lotor would have definitely hit him in the Sexual Orientation with a very hard hammer.

But that was the problem. It was him and Shiro. Adding a third person was  _weird._ He’d never dated anybody else. So it meant he didn’t know how to act. He didn’t know how to be funny and charming  _back._ And really, he wasn’t sure why - with Shiro, being  _Shiro,_ and Lotor the perfect exiled prince - he had a place in anything at all.

All of which came out of his mouth with agonizing slowness, watching Shiro’s face with an anxiety which just got worse and worse the more he talked. And the worse the anxiety got, the  _more_ he talked. It wasn’t jealousy. That would have been easier. It was just -  _fear._

Shiro nodded quietly. Then he opened his arms and Keith wordlessly fell into them. “You will always,  _always_ have a place with me. It doesn’t matter how many other people there are in my heart. It was yours first.”

Keith clung to that. He couldn’t help it. “And it’s - it’s okay, how much I like Lotor, right?” he asked nervously.

Shiro chuckled. “He’s an asshole. What’s not to like?”

“Are you talking about me?” came the voice from the other room. “It better be good.”

Shiro raised his voice. “I was calling you an asshole.”

“Oh splendid. So it’s all true.” Lotor stuck his head around the corner, long hair bundled up in a towel. “Altean showers are strange. Anybody care to join me and um, help me out with them?”

Keith snorted. “Is there even room for three people in there?”

Shiro blushed. “I’m game to try it. You?”

“Oh hell yes.” 

He was still scared. But well, he was dating Takashi Shirogane, cheesy motherfucker, and Prince Lotor, purple and slightly harebrained genius. He could be scared - but only so much.


	4. Palluraggar - The Taste of Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: loss, character death, a n g s t

After the end of it all, they found her at the edge of where the void had been, staring at her own skin like it had betrayed her. She didn’t speak a word. And she was young, impossibly young, but the fear in her eyes and the hatred that she aimed at them, all of them, told them that her memories were there. All of them, this time.

               Her name was Haggar, except for when it was Honerva, and sometimes she wouldn’t respond to anything at all. Allura imagined a certain amount of it was spite. Pidge’s theory was that her memories and ability to recall things fluctuated depending on the day. But they brought her food anyway, and each day, Allura found herself lingering a little longer with the last other woman of her species alive.

               “Come on, Allura,” Pidge murmured. “We should go.”

               It was one of the quiet days. Honerva – Haggar? – had barely touched her food. Instead her hands were folded in her lap, squeezed so tight that Allura thought her fingers might break.

               Allura sat down next to her again, and glanced up at Pidge. The two of them had found each other in the quiet spaces between words, the little pieces of loss that came with losing a father. But all loss was the same, when you broke it down. It didn’t matter who was right and who was wrong.

               All that mattered was who was left standing amongst the rubble of half-remembered dreams at the end of it all.

               She put her hand on Haggar’s shoulder, her impossibly young, impossibly cold shoulder – death froze what it took, even when you stole it back – and wondered if it would have been kinder to let her go back into the void. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m sorry that you lost him. I’m not – sorry about what we did. But I’m sorry that you had to lose him.”

               The tears that Haggar had been holding back – for weeks, months, building up to make a barrier she couldn’t even get words past – began to trickle down her cheeks, down past the red marks that gouged her sharp cheeks. Then she seemed to collapse into herself, whatever dignity or pride or stubbornness had been keeping together finally giving way. “Don’t look at me,” she sobbed in a voice so harsh it could have cut glass.

               Pidge sat on her other side, hand hovering just above her shoulder. “It –“ She swallowed. “It doesn’t go away,” she admitted. Allura lowered her eyes. She’d hoped – she’d  _hoped_ so much that her inability to confront her loss had just been the enormity of it. But then Sam Holt had died. And they’d discovered the truth together. That it never really stopped feeling like swallowing glass.

               “But it gets easier,” said Pidge.

               But it got easier.

               Especially with help.

               “Don’t look at me,” Haggar cried out again. So Allura closed her eyes, and rested her forehead on Haggar’s shoulder, and lowered her hand to interlace her fingers with the other woman’s. Lost in time and space and drifting in a world that had long since ceased to have a place for her.

               Allura’s other hand found Pidge’s on the back of the couch, squeezing and holding tight.

               Well, Haggar had a place here. A strange one, a fragile one, and it depended on a lot of things, like her not killing them at the first opportunity.

               But it was something.


	5. Shallureith - Almost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for chapter: A N G S T. Implied unrequited love. Violence, PTSD-related prejudice (the Allura thing is. complicated.)

With him gone, the space between feels like a black hole. They find comfort in each other, but it’s a ripping, tearing, violent comfort, a distraction, and Allura is never sure whether she’s reminding herself that Keith is her  _enemy_ and she’s supposed to  _hate him_ or she’s making herself forget - she’s kissing him when she forgets, she’s biting him when she remembers, and woven through all of it at once is the quiet ache of Shiro’s absence. 

Keith feels it even more than she does. She knows this. She can’t forget that much, even on the days when she wants nothing more than to tear her father’s armour off of him and take out Zarkon’s crimes on his skin, because she can’t see his betrayal coming but she couldn’t see Zarkon’s either - but even then, he never stops being the one who was Shiro’s first. So she clings to him, hard enough to leave bruises, with not as much tenderness as she wants to, but she does.

She wants to love him. There’s plenty about Keith to love. And there’s plenty about him that she can admire. He can make her heart beat faster with kisses at her collarbone. With the way he wields his sword, the way he pilots Red and then Black, the speed of his wrists and his ship. She watches the way he ties back his shoulder-length hair and she can see why Shiro loves him, why Shiro can spend hours watching him just  _exist._ She does the same to Shiro - did. She can’t use the past tense, not yet, not until she’s  _sure-_

She can feel Keith’s heartbeat and she knows why Shiro loved him just as much as he loved her.

And Allura wants to love Keith, she does. And she almost loves him. Almost. 

Almost.


	6. Kidgance - Collars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: collars and.... jealousy?
> 
> The prompt was "This is gonna sound weird but could I get werewolf Pidge getting pets and love from Lance and Keith while they argue over who's phone number to put on her collar?" Which is. The best prompt ever. I had so much fun with this.
> 
> Keith/Pidge/Lance!

“This is ridiculous,” Pidge sighed. “I can’t believe this. Isn’t a collar enough?”

“It’s an important detail!” Lance snatched the sharpie from Keith’s hand, earning a horrified gasp from the older boy. “I don’t trust Keith not to see you, I don’t know, fighting a dog and not  _try to join in.”_

“That’s ridiculous,” Keith scoffed. “I -” Then he glared at Pidge. “Oh come on. Don’t look like you’re  _thinking_ about it.”

“I mean, you are pretty quick to my defense-”

“ _I’m not fighting a dog for you._ Shooting it, maybe-”

Pidge gasped in horror, then tore the sharpie from his hand and gave it back to Lance. “No shooting puppies!”

“I didn’t mean - ugh.” Keith distracted himself by tangling his hands in Pidge’s very soft fur. There wasn’t much of it, but she was sprouting more of it the closer they got to the full moon. “I was hoping the collar thing would be, you know, a collaborative effort. Especially since it takes  _Lance_ half an hour to get out of bed. The dog-catchers will get there before he does.”

“Ha ha. Congrats, you’re an insomniac,” Lance grumbled.

Pidge tugged thoughtfully on the collar. “There isn’t room for  _both?”_ she whined.

Keith examined the tag on the collar. “…I mean, I  _guess_ there is,” he mumbled.

“There! Perfect solution!”

Her two boyfriends continued to glare at each other. She sighed.

“Or I can go talk to Sh-”

“We’ll put both on,” conceded Lance. “Your fur is too soft to let go of.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said with a smug grin, then made herself comfortable sprawled across both their laps. They’d get over themselves. Eventually.


	7. Hidgance - Valentine's Day Shenanigans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This prompt was for hopefultigercycle on Tumblr!
> 
> "Garrison trio (poly dating) as adults. Spending Valentine's Day in space. They're all busy, until the day almost ends and they manage to spend time with each other by watching some space event occur."
> 
> Lance/Pidge/Hunk!

Valentine’s Day, out in space, was just like any other. They woke up in their usual tangle of limbs - “Are you sure we can’t just ask Allura if there are any bigger beds?” Hunk had groaned, but Pidge stood by the insistence that that meant *defeat*.

February 14th. It didn’t mean anything far away from the sun that Earth’s calendar was marked by. And honestly, when Pidge’s day started with a distress call for the Green Lion, she didn’t have time to think about it.

“Matt got into trouble,” she grumbled to Lance, who just laughed and reached up, fixing her bra from where she’d been annoyedly flailing at it.

“Go get him, hun.”

—-

As it turned out, Matt had discovered whatever the real life version of a Sarlacc pit was. Pidge would have remembered the real name of it from her Altean lessons if Matt hadnt been screaming “FUCK FUCK ITS A SARLACC” while hanging off the edge of the pit.

“Thank god I have Luke Skywalker for a sister,” he sighed. She couldn’t even stay mad at him. 

 — 

The irritation returned when Pidge finally,  _finally_ made her way back to the Castle - to find Allura dictating careful instructions through the intercom. “Rotate it three degrees left -  _left,_  Lance,” she sighed.

“I’m upside-down!”

“ _Your_ left.”

“Why is my boyfriend stuck in the walls?” Pidge sighed.

Allura closed her eyes, summoning whatever patience she had left. “…Because  _Coran,”_ she said only slightly viciously, “ _let go.”_

 _…_ Pidge decided she didn’t want to know why Coran had been holding on in the first place. She supposed it was just life as normal. And after more than two years in space, she didn’t know why  _any_ of this surprised her anymore.

“And Hunk-?”

“Uh.” Allura gave a helpless look to Shiro. Shiro shrugged.

“Something something training bot went haywire? He and Keith are working on it. Coran’s on intercom with them.”

“You know,” Pidge grumbled, “I’m starting to think Alfor is cockblocking us from beyond the grave.”

Allura would have been in her right to be offended, but she just snorted. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

—

Pidge meant to go to bed. But then Matt had solved one of the equations that had been giving them trouble with their information collection, and well - well, she  _couldn’t_ say no to that. She’d forgotten entirely what day it was.

Her communicator went off a few hours later, and she answered it with a sudden realization that she was  _exhausted. “_ What’s up?”

“Heyo! I finally made it out of the air ducts!”

She burst into laughter. “Lance! Why were you in there to begin with?” Her chest began to hurt. She’d barely seen him all day.

Matt raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, I’ll tell you all about it. Me and Hunk are on the observation deck. You wanna come join us-”

“Yes,” she burst out. Matt shooed her off before she could apologize, and she made her way through the castle.

By the time she got there, Hunk had already made his head comfortable on Lance’s lap, and Lance was leaning back on his elbows. “Hey Pidge,” Hunk mumbled from Lance’s knees. 

“Hey guys.” She stumbled to the ground. “What’s-”

“I know days are kind of weird in space,” Lance fumbled out before she could ask the question. “But, um-”

“I asked Allura to find us a sunset,” Hunk completed the sentence.

“And I asked her about a bigger bed. Cause I know you’re stubborn.”

Pidge blinked at both of them, then stared out the window. The sun was crossing below the planet’s horizon, lighting up the dark atmosphere with fire and turning the barely visible clouds purple. “I… don’t know what I thought our first Valentine’s would be like,” she admitted.

“Oh, me neither,” Hunk laughed. “I didn’t expect to get nearly beaten to death by a haywire training robot.”

“Well,  _I_ think it’s perfectly in keeping with our bizarro lives.” Lance raised his hand. “Now you sitting down and cuddling us or what?”

She was.

She  _definitely_ was.


	8. Kidgunk - Your Machinery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Requested by Mikiri, and I made it a sequel to Inner Workings (found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/13247934) although all you really need to know is that Hunk got stabbed and Miki made the >:c face at me. 
> 
> Kidgunk QPPs! Also TW for character injury, sadness, etc. No MCD though. He's fine. Eventually.

It isn’t right, thinks Pidge. There are things that happen in this world, and things that don’t. Shiro makes bad jokes, and Lance worse ones. Keith doesn’t talk much, and Lance talks too much. Shiro eats too little, Pidge eats too much.

And Hunk doesn’t get hurt. Hunk is the rock. Not always, no - he gets anxious, he gets scared- but he’s her center. She can depend on him stealing her chocolate bars or grumbling at her ehile brushing her hair because ‘presentability is important’.

Hunk doesn’t get hurt.

So this - her sitting crosslegged in front of a pod with him inside it, watching his face and trying not to think about how still and silent it is - her trying not to see the hole bored through his stomach - this is not how reality is supposed to work.

Keith sits down next to her with a quiet solemnity she almost can’t stand. It’s almoat like he’s mourning already - even thogh she knows better. That theres nothing to do but wait.

“He’s going to be okay,” Keith says in a quiet murmur.

“Of course he is,” she snapped, her fingers digging into her thigh. “Of=“

And then she realizes that Keith’s face is wet. Keith doesn’t cry. Keith doesn’t-

But he  _is._ And Pidge is bad at dealing with crying people, doubly so when she cares about them.

But she leans over and takes his hand in hers anyway. She tries.

“…Of course he’ll be okay,” she says a little more softly. “Hunk’s always okay.”

“Yeah,” he whispers through his tears. And they sit together and watch just for a little longer, and they wait.


	9. Shatteith - The Best-Laid Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-Kerberos Shiro/Keith/Matt... sort of.

“You’re not really into this dating thing, are you?”

“I’m not…  _not_ into it,” mumbled Keith quietly from behind his menu, glancing over top of it to look at Matt Holt with a certain amount of trepidation. Matt was certainly  _nice._ They’d gotten up to plenty of shenanigans together. Mostly drunken shenanigans, which meant that most of Keith’s memories of the guy were filtered through the amber hue of Jack Daniels whiskey.

The problem was, most of what Keith understood of Matt Holt was “that other guy Shiro had a crush on”. It didn’t  _bother_ him. Shiro was Shiro. Shiro wore his heart on his sleeve, as much as he desperately tried to put up a mask of gentle detachment, and while it took him a bit to attach to somebody –  _lord,_ once he was yours, he was  _yours._

Well.

The ‘yours’ bit was currently the bit under debate. Most people, thought Keith with a little more irritation than was probably necessary, would have had the two objects of their affection fight it out. Or dated them both, given that they both agreed.

Shiro?  _Shiro_ had decided that he was much too terrible at commitment (lies) or emotions (also lies) to actually go through with an Actual Relationship. And, terrified that he was letting  _two_ people down –

-he’d set them up on a date.

Keith sometimes wondered how, exactly, Shiro had become an astrophysics student.

Matt laughed, putting down his menu. “Don’t worry about it. We’re just hanging out.”

“O-okay.” Keith lowered his menu slightly. He liked Matt  _just fine._ He just wasn’t sure about this  _date_ thing.

Matt leaned his arms on the table and bent conspiratorially forward. “You wanna hear the funniest thing ever?”

“What?”

“He’s sitting like, two tables away. He thinks I can’t see that stupid floof of his from across the restaurant.”

It was so unexpected that Keith burst into laughter. “He  _what?_ ”

“Shh, shh. Don’t look at him. He’ll think you’re laughing at some amazingly clever joke of mine.” Matt grinned – then flexed. “Or maybe just how stunningly handsome I am.”

Keith leaned back in his seat. “Don’t push it.”

Matt put his arms down, resting his chin in his hand with a soft smile. “…You’re a pilot. Right?”

“You knew that already,” Keith mumbled, suddenly overwhelmed with shyness again.

“You don’t like talking about yourself?”

“I’m not  _good_ at it. I’m boring.”

“Where do you live?”

“Out in the desert. I’ve got a little house there.”

Matt blinked. “Out in the middle of  _nowhere?_  Damn. That’s  _cool._ ”

“It’s not cool. I get my water from a well.”

Matt just wolf-whistled. Keith fought the urge to hide behind his menu again, this time because he could feel his cheeks lighting up and his heart doing funny things in his chest.

Stupid Shiro. Stupid Shiro and his harebrained ridiculous plans. 


End file.
